The limits of BIG Studio One song ?

asked Mar 28, 2018 in Studio One 3 by jeremwal (290 points)

Hi,

Well, my fourth track in Studio One 3 :

- 78 tracks

- 30 VST instrument tracks

- 31 Audio tracks

- 15 bus

- 102 insert fx

Sooo, it's a lot. I am used to add a lot of mess, ... My old Logic was crying. Here, everything remains fine BUT :

- I am obliged to increase the buffer to the max, which is normal (I think)

- I have problem to add new fx or synth. Some are added without any problem, some other just doesn't want to be added. For exemple new Kontakt 5 instances are added without any problem, but Pianoteq 6 or Omnisphere doesn't want. If i test in a new song, I have no problem with those vst, so maybe... some limits appear, i don't know how, why, what, ....etc

- The CPU usage become weird, and is not reflecting the exact use of my monitoring Windows CPU. I can be at max 53% of use in real, but in Studio One, the CPU viewer indicates I am at 73, or 90% and almost in red sometimes

- Some insert fx are inactive even if they are active, I have to change of track to hear them. If I want to hear the fx of the track 1, I can't stay on the track 1 selected, I have to select another track... Sometimes it's the contrary... But when I mixdown the all thing, everything seems very fine (or maybe some fx like Ozone 8 works fine only on bus ... not on vst insert mod)

- It takes ages to close the song : I have between 9Go and 20Go of RAM used, then when I close the song, I have to wait several minutes each time .... I am not patient, especially as my PC is very recent, and powerful, I can't bear to wait, so I kill the app using the task manager each time... (I know I know it's not cool) ....

Thanks for reading

2 Answers

answered Mar 28, 2018 by robertgray3 (42,810 points)
edited Mar 28, 2018 by robertgray3

They should really make an official FAQ on this since it comes up so often.

1. Larger buffers is pretty normal, at least for S1. "Dropout Protection” options and settings play a part too. This all works in conjunction with their low-latency monitoring modes that work with compatible interfaces like Quantum.

2. There’s been a thread going for a long time in the forum that details issues Windows has with the number of different third party plugins running. If you’re on Windows, you will eventually run into it. Some of the later pages show ways to see if you’re near the limit. Consolidating with Transforming (my preference) and selective bouncing (the popular option) as well as utilizing more PreSonus effects when you’re choosing plugins are some ways to address this. It has to do with the libraries that different manufacturers use and some kind of Windows processing limitations. So if you have 20 PreSonus reverb inserts, it still only counts as one insert on Windows.

3. The CPU meter confuses some users because it shows you the biggest load on a single core. Studio One *does* balance its burden between different cores for the most part but some things are processed on an individual core rather than being spread out. Each track runs on its own core, and Multi-Instruments run on their own core, as far as I can tell. They’ll likely be improving this in the future like they did for the general CPU efficiency, as the number of votes for this feature request indicates.

4 & 5. Not sure, these might have to do with #2 but I use a Mac. Because #2 is afaik a windows limitation, I can’t say one way or the other. I’d probably try some of those solutions mentioned for monitoring your operation system’s process limitations and interact with the support team as much as you can, but maybe try the techniques I mentioned before.

Good luck!

answered Jan 9, 2019 by petebrown1 (220 points)

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